HOUSTON (Sept. 12, 2023) — The United States faces a looming shortage of surgeons in many specialties. In a first step toward addressing this problem, Marc A. Moon, MD, and colleagues have developed an electronic questionnaire that could be used to identify high school students with personalities suited to the surgical profession.

In the U.S., many surgeons are approaching retirement, yet there are not enough new surgeons to meet the growing needs of patients. It is estimated that by 2032, our healthcare system will have 15,000 to 30,000 fewer surgeons than it will need.

In an effort to begin to address this problem, Dr. Moon, chief of Adult Cardiac Surgery at The Texas Heart Institute and chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, worked with colleagues at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital to develop a brief electronic questionnaire intended to identify high school students with personality traits that might predispose them toward surgery.

To create the questionnaire, the investigators borrowed questions from three existing personality tests: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which evaluates four dimensions of personality (Extroversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving); the Big-Five Inventory, which focuses particularly on openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism; and the Duckworth Grit Scale, which is designed to measure “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”

The 38-item questionnaire was given to two groups: 61 students recruited from three Houston-area high schools (two public, one private), and 96 surgeons from two major surgical centers (one in Houston, one in Missouri). The investigators then compared the results between groups.

“We found that certain traits tested by these various scales were common among surgeons,” says Dr. Moon. “Compared with high school students, surgeons showed stronger tendencies toward extroversion, intuition, thinking and judging on the Myers-Briggs items, and toward neuroticism and conscientiousness on the Big-Five items. Surgeons also scored higher on grit.

“But perhaps the most important finding was that a certain subgroup of the high school students had traits similar to those of the surgeons,” Dr. Moon concludes. “That could make this questionnaire a potentially useful tool for identifying good candidates for surgical training at a relatively early age and encouraging them through exposure to the medical field, and through mentorship and sponsorship.”

News Story By Stephen N. Palmer, PhD, ELS

Read report:
Walsh LC, Sui D, Higgins RSD, Moon MR, Lee JJ, Antonoff MB. Surgeons of the future: A novel screening tool for high-school students. J Surg Res. 2023;290:61-70.